


happy birthday.

by nonbinarybabadook



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: aka the group makes maka go on a trip with them for her birthday and she forgets it's her birthday, soul and maka are queer platonic partners, they finally get a break
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2019-08-16 22:38:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16504115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinarybabadook/pseuds/nonbinarybabadook
Summary: After the Kishin's killed, the seven finally get a vacation.chapter one edited on 11/14.





	1. convincing.

**Author's Note:**

> i hc maka's birthday is november 1st. 
> 
> 11/14 chapter one was edited. please reread if you've read it before that.

Maka was already regretting agreeing to this ‘vacation’.

  
When Blackstar had originally presented the idea, Maka had refused to go - unless she was the one planning it. Blackstar was hopeless when it came to planning anything that wasn’t his next meal, and while Kid later had promised he would be helping with the trip’s layout, Maka knew he was just as bad in his own way. She’d then refused when they had agreed to let her be part of the planning. They’d defeated Asura three years ago, but the work was far from done and the world was far from running smoothly with all of the new changes of witches and humans acting as allies and beginning to live side by side. There was so much to do, so many things to work out and bodies to still needing to be honored that there was no time to spare. Maka had almost immediately started helping Kid with paperwork, writing letters and all of the extra work that had been placed on him in the absence of his father. The chaos had overwhelmed him, nothing sorted and nothing symmetrical, so Maka became his partner in making everything run as smoothly as possible. Everything she knew, Kid knew, and vice versa. They worked together ceaselessly, but they were a good team, and got a remarkable amount of work done together.

  
Since Maka had been living with Blair for the better part of five years, she’d quickly become one of the people that communicated with the witches on different subjects, often being the person they came to whenever they had any questions, or just wanted a conversation. Maka, ever the lover of learning, would push aside tasks for a few hours at times just to talk to the various witches who came and went, swapping stories and learning as much about magic as she could, now that she had the resources. If there was one thing that would keep Maka from finishing a letter to someone halfway across the world demanding Kid increase their pay, it would be a conversation with a witch about the connection between witches and their familiars and the similarities they had with a resonating meister and weapon pair.

  
Soul also had a learning curve to follow with being the newest and last Death Scythe. While Spirit had often seemed a useless accessory to Death’s life, he had known everything Death had known. He’d been Death’s only consult that knew every detail, and Spirit quickly became part of Kid and Maka’s daily routine as they tried to learn a system they were dropped into with no knowledge of. Kid, Maka, Soul and Spirit spent countless hours locked away into the former Lord Death’s business rooms, working together to put the new world order in motion. It was odd for all of them in the beginning, but they’d gotten used to each other and their respective work within months. Any time not spent helping run Death City was spent at home, usually asleep.

  
With all of that, it was easy to imagine why Maka had said no when Blackstar said they all needed a vacation. Patty and Liz had somehow been able to convince Kid of joining in on the insanity, and next thing she knew, Maka was the only person protesting the trip. Over the next week, various members of their friend group would try to convince her to go, often interrupting her work simply to pester her about it. She’d barred her door shut after Blackstar and Patty had started taking everything she was working on it and throwing it across the room while singing different songs too loudly with a promise that she’d think about it if they _got the hell out_.

  
In the end, Soul had been the one to get her to agree.

  
Nightmares are practically a guarantee for meisters and weapons who have seen and been through the worst, but when Maka had a nightmare that sent her to the bathroom to puke her guts out amidst a panic attack that scared even Blair, her exhausted mind truly considered it. She’d finally calmed, leaning back against Soul’s chest on the bathroom floor while she pet Blair when Soul had asked, very quietly, for her to _please take a break, at least_. She scared both of them --- and herself, and if it was a break that might help her mind become more sound after the hell they went through instead of pushing it aside in favor of _everything else_ , then she was willing to try it, if only for Soul’s sake.

  
The others had been ecstatic when she finally agreed to go the next night at group dinner. Blair was immediately banned from going, so she stayed home to watch over the house.

  
Someone --- Maka couldn’t remember who --- had asked Soul how he finally managed to convince her to go, and he’d just grinned and shrugged, but only Blair saw the look exchanged between the meister and weapon after the questioner looked away. What Maka didn’t think about when she agreed to go, however, was that this trip was simply another thing she now had to plan, and was now another thing she had to sort through and add to the pile of things she needed to do. Kid offered to fund the entire thing, and while he did have the money to do so, Maka insisted on taking care of herself and Soul for the trip, needing even that slice of independence to convince herself she had control over the situation that she was certain was an awful idea.

  
“How can you leave the city right now?” Maka had asked Kid amidst an argument --- well, Maka was yelling, Kid was trying to calm her down. “We --- you --- I --- have to do lists a mile long! We can’t just leave when there’s a city to run! Who are people going to turn to for answers? My papa? You can’t be serious about this!”  
“Maka,” he’d said as sternly as he could with her, resting his hands on her shoulders and making her stand still facing him, “we all need this. Death City will last a week without us.”

  
“How?” Maka had asked, her final argument on keeping herself in her hometown crumbling in front of her.

  
“It will. We still have the professors to help, and Marie’s gotten very strict in parenthood. She’s almost like Azusa now.”

  
She was, but that wasn’t a point Maka wanted to admit, let alone base their leaving on.

  
But a week passed, Maka worked and finished her studies, and she approved or discarded ideas given to her for the trip, and the world didn’t end. Their vacation simply became another thing she had to work on. She almost didn’t realize she’d planned almost everything, along with buying plane tickets and setting up reservations until she was done, and the entire trip was staring her in the face.

  
Three weeks after she agreed to go on vacation, Maka got on a plane with Soul, Blackstar, Tsubaki, Liz, Patty and Kid.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the Kishin's killed, the seven finally get a vacation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hc maka's birthday is november 1st. canon divergent.

When Blackstar tried to start a fight at the security check, Maka was glad she had forced everyone out of bed and into a cab two hours before their flight was scheduled to take off. Never mind that she only thought to do so because her mother had done the same with her and her father the very few times they traveled. She was perfectly content with writing it off as being prepared, trying to keep thoughts of her mother out of her mind. Soul was holding an iced coffee like his life depended on it, often had to be nudged awake again, and Patty was less hyperactive than usual, but with Kid’s insistence that their flight take off at eight, Maka got everyone going. 

Everything went smoothly, (apart from Soul nearly spilling his coffee on himself in the cab when they arrived and Maka woke him up again), right up until Blackstar decided he wanted to take his early morning aggression out on someone. 

“You’re not allowed to have any weapons on the plane, sir,” the woman says with an even expression, obviously too used to finding knives in people’s bags to be rifled. 

“Huh?” Blackstar barks, a dark grin spreading across his face, “then I guess most of us won’t be allowed to go through, huh? Hey, Liz, think you’ll set off the metal detector?” He laughs, turning his sneer to Liz as she pulls Patty towards her in a protective grip with narrowed eyes. Patty can often feed off of Blackstar’s energy, and vice versa, and her sister apparently has no desire to let him goad either of them into something that could potentially ruin the day. 

“Sir, do you have any other weapons on you?” the guard asks, eyeing him warily. Another guard, this one armed, looks over at the confrontation. 

Blackstar begins to step forward, mouth open to say something that’ll surely ruin the day for everyone involved, but Maka’s faster, having known him far too long to let him continue. Reining him in with a tight grip on the back of his shirt, Maka smiles smoothly at the guard as she shoves him in Tsubaki’s direction.  


“I’m so sorry, miss. He’s not used to being up this early.” 

“Fuck that, Maka! I can wake up whenever I want!” 

Tsubaki slaps her hand over his mouth while whispering furiously in his ear while Maka smiles tightly. 

“Again, I’m sorry for him. He’s not an actual danger to anyone, and if he has any weapons on him --- he shouldn’t,” she interrupts, sending a glare his way that actually makes him freeze for a moment, “and if he does, feel free to lock him in a cell until we get back from vacation.”

“Are you responsible for him, miss?” The guard asks, her politeness softer, a mix of sympathy and amusement in her eyes. 

“Responsible?” Maka snorts, feeling once again like the extremely unqualified babysitter of the group. She’s never able to tell how exactly she _feels_ about it. But as the leader of the team, she supposes that she is, in the end, responsible for them all. “Yes, I suppose I am,” she says with a touch of exasperation, looking over at Blackstar again, who passes through the metal detector without setting off any alarms --- thank Death --- and finds a smile on her face when she turns back to the guard. 

“Well, then I have to say, I’m very sorry,” the guard answers with a grin, patting the back of Maka’s hand on her bag with her gloved hand. “I can’t imagine how you deal with him.” 

Maka laughs, Soul snorting next to her as he returns from throwing away his empty coffee cup, and nods. “Yeah, I don’t know how either. My better half tries to keep me in check,” she says, her grin turning to Soul as she sets her hand on his shoulder. He grins back, shrugging slightly in embarrassment as he moves in front of her to progress through the line. “Really,” Maka continues, leaning slightly closer to the guard as if sharing a secret, “he’s just a big chihuahua who never went to training school.” 

The guard laughs, nodding as if she’s spent every day for the last seventeen years with Blackstar as Maka has. “I can see it. Have a good flight, miss.” 

“Thank you. I hope you have a great day --- please never give him the knives back,” she adds, almost as an afterthought. 

Grinning, the guard hands them off to another armed guard, who in turn disappears, “It’s policy not to.” 

“Wish we had that,” Maka deadpans just before she reaches the front of the line to the metal detector, seeing the guard laugh just before passing through.It gives her a brief feeling that this trip may not be a disaster.

When she sees Blackstar on the other side, however, a deep scowl hardens her face. Soul’s too tired to truly register how deep Maka’s rage is, only shuffling behind her as her gaze zeroes in on Blackstar, being held still on a bench by Tsubaki’s hands on his shoulders and muttering about being _too big of a guy to even bother with these idiots_. Grabbing her bag and throwing it over her shoulder, Maka storms over to him, grabs him by the collar of his shirt, and pushes him into an elevator being emptied before he can say another word. 

Pushing him against the wall, Maka corners him, death in her eyes as she shoves a finger into his face, resisting the urge to push him again or punch him. “You’re the one who insisted on this fucking trip, and that I come along. If you mess it up and we all go to jail, I’m going to kill you.”

Cockiness washes over him, crooking his posture and lifting the side of his mouth in a practiced sneer, likely meant to piss her off further. “Come on, Maka, you should know better than that. Thinking one of those puny guards could take on me? As if!” he brags, completely missing her point. 

Soul rests his hand on her back at the perfect moment, opening resonance and tugging her lightly away from Blackstar when she tenses up, fist already curled and prepared to fly. Inhaling deeply, Maka backs up into Soul’s chest, counting to ten and letting his exhausted presence wash over her when he lightly presses his nose into her hair. 

_Thanks_ , she sends through their link, feeling lighter when a tired, silent affirmation comes back through.

Kid keeps her attention as they leave the elevator, Tsubaki’s stormy expression and furious aura reassuring Maka that she can look away from him as Kids prompts her about a book that a witch recommended her. 

Lagging into the back of the group now that the tension’s lost, Soul’s eyelids droop once again, and the need for coffee to make it through the next hour before the flight pokes at his half-functioning mind. He zombies his way through the airport, only keeping up when Liz and Patty link their arms through his and march him forward. He manages some protests, but mostly lets them take over walking with only one request --- another cup of coffee when they’re near the gate. Patty enthusiastically agrees, but Soul doesn’t trust her word for a second when she uses that too - bright tone, so he just grumbles and resigns himself to his fate. 

The airport that Death City defaults to for transportation when mirrors can’t be used is small, but very generously stocked for the meisters, weapons, witches and others passing through. Witches are less common in the airport, but when one came through and was thoroughly offended by the stocking, stores began selling some of the latest trends of food and drink in the witching world. 

They had amazing chairs. Unfortunately not recliners, but with enough cushioning to feel comfortable enough to sleep in before a flight, and Soul sinks into one with relief. It’d been the promise of sleeping at the gate and on the plane that got him out of bed in the first place (and Maka’s iron will, but he chooses to focus on that promise instead), and now that he was at the gate, he was going to make due on that promise, slouching down and hunkering into his sweatshirt. 

Setting both of their carry ons on the chair next to him, Maka pulls the blanket he haphazardly shoved in before they left out and sets it over him and tugging his headband over his eyes to help shut out the rising sun like this is perfectly normal. Liz and Tsubaki seem to both sense something as their gazes snap to Patty, who looks at Soul’s sleeping body like it’s a brand new canvas. The next five minutes are then devoted to confiscating any and all pens Patty might have as she whines about not having anything to do on the plane anymore while Maka and Kid discuss the plan when they arrive at the airport. 

None of them, unfortunately, have eyes on Blackstar. As if he’s a dog that knows when he’s not being watched, he runs to the customer service desk, honing in on the phone an employee to the airline is using to make an announcement. Using his quick feet for evil, he dodges past Maka and Kid to race over, grabbing the phone and jumping on the desk at the same time. Kid made himself sparse the second Blackstar took off, not wanting any unneeded attention. Being Lord Death came with some inconveniences, and no one wanted the vacation to be focused on the fact that Lord Death himself was among the people, gracing them with his wavelength and power.

“Good morning, Death City! It’s me! The great and wonderful Blackstar! Feel safe on your flight, you've got a god protecting you! Even the sky wouldn’t mess with me --- “ 

He’s abruptly cut off when Maka grabs his ankle and yanks it out from under him. Halfway through the air, she slams the spine of her book against his head, furious. Luckily, this was Death City, and most people had at least heard distantly of Blackstar after the battle on the moon, and stories of his shenanigans usually followed the whispered awe. As Maka dragged Blackstar back over to their gate while whisper - yelling at him, Kid reappeared in the quiet space left behind to speak to the attendants. 

If she didn’t know he was a buffoon all on his own, she’d think he was trying to piss her off. This “birthday present” was turning into something Maka would look back on with exhaustion and dislike from then on. She’d agreed to go at his constant insistence, what more could he possibly want? She knew he wanted everyone’s attention, of course, because he always did, but this seemed like he was going an extra mile to make it as miserable for everyone as possible. Maka wished for a moment that she had Blair wrapped around her neck and purring in her ear, just to make this more bearable. Or had some duct tape to wrap Blackstar in. Unfortunately, she knows he’d make some comment about how “kinky” that is, and it’d only serve to annoy her further. 

Standing to go get food for everyone, Maka stops by Patty, a smile on her face while holding on of her favorite bright purple markers.  


“I have a deal.” 

Eyes fixed on the marker, Patty grins, nodding already before looking back up to Maka’s eyes. It wasn’t so often anymore that mischief danced in her eyes --- helping run a worldwide organization, city and working with witches to make a balance that works for everyone --- but whenever it’s there, it’s when Patty loves her the most.  


“Target Blackstar. Keep him busy as quietly as you can while I go get whatever sugary food I can find for you and the group. Leave Soul and Tsubaki alone. Deal?” 

Grinning wide, Patty nods enthusiastically. “Deal!” 

Grabbing the marker, opening and fixing the cap onto the end of it, Maka knows she has at least ten minutes to find breakfast for the seven of them before a brawl between the two breaks out, if Patty’s expression is a good indicator. 

Soul, still a few seats over, cracks an eye open to look at her, eyebrow rising in question. He hasn’t seen this behavior, or Maka grinning like that in months, maybe a year. When she shrugs with a self indulgent smile, he simply snorts and closes his eyes again, quietly pleased. It’d been too long since she’d been able to devote a moment to be anything other than worried and focused on keeping the world running, and he was glad he had a part in pushing her into this trip, for the time being. Settling further into his chair, Soul sighs, taking in a deep breath for what feels like the first time since they killed Asura.


End file.
